After study­ing in Vien­na and Paris, Got­tfried Salz­mann quick­ly estab­lished him­self in the art scene as an inter­na­tion­al­ly rec­og­nized water­col­orist and has mas­tered water­col­or paint­ing like no oth­er. Salz­mann has dealt with a wide vari­ety of art move­ments in mod­ern and con­tem­po­rary art. He looks for inter­ac­tions with draw­ing, engrav­ing, pho­tog­ra­phy, acrylic and oil paint­ing and uses dif­fer­ent tech­niques in his works at the same time.
Through new points of view, per­spec­tives and influ­ences of infor­mal art, he suc­ceeds in a game between rep­re­sen­ta­tion­al­ism and abstrac­tion and thus gives water­col­or paint­ing new impuls­es. In his works he brings the poet­ry of cities and land­scapes to light, paints and trans­forms them.
His trade­mark are the pre­cise and detailed works. In the past, land­scapes were fol­lowed by series from big cities, par­tic­u­lar­ly well known from his time in New York.

The artist has already exhib­it­ed in numer­ous inter­na­tion­al gal­leries and muse­ums in Europe, Japan and the Unit­ed States, such as the Alberti­na (Vien­na), the Salzburg Muse­um, the Essl Muse­um (Vien­na), the Art Muse­um (Vaduz), the Bib­lio­thèque Nationale de Paris and the STRABAG Kun­st­fo­rum (Vien­na). The Alberti­na has its own col­lec­tion of his watercolors.

Klaus Albrecht Schröder, Direc­tor of the Alberti­na, for­mu­lates Salzmann’s unique­ness as fol­lows: “For the Alberti­na, the museum’s own col­lec­tion of Salz­mann water­col­ors is one of the most pre­cious trea­sures. Salz­mann asserts him­self in the chain from Albrecht Dür­er to Josef von Alt to the late Klee as a legit­i­mate heir and suc­ces­sor, not as an epigone. Got­tfried Salz­mann not only reha­bil­i­tat­ed a genre that had appar­ent­ly long been obso­lete, such as land­scape art and city vedute, but also reha­bil­i­tat­ed the inex­haustible pos­si­bil­i­ties of a tech­nol­o­gy that had wrong­ly reced­ed into the back­ground. ” In search of motifs and their imple­men­ta­tion, Got­tfried Salz­mann turned, as one of the first water­col­or painters after 1945, to oth­er art direc­tions of mod­ern and con­tem­po­rary art. “Salz­mann under­took to make essen­tial knowl­edge of mod­ern pic­to­r­i­al think­ing fruit­ful for the area of water­col­or, which was hard­ly touched by it. Above all, this means that the pic­to­r­i­al means are not com­plete­ly absorbed in the ser­vice of the motif, but rather eman­ci­pate them­selves from it and devel­op their own language. ”

Got­tfried Salz­mann has been rep­re­sent­ed with works in the Welz Gallery since 1969. In the upcom­ing exhi­bi­tion works from all cre­ative peri­ods up to his cur­rent works, col­laged land­scapes, will be shown.